Thursday, May 04, 2006

Mission Impossbile 3 Still sucks

Charity. That’s what the so-called “Tent Pole” screenings are. The big studios know that everyone’s going to see this stuff anyway, so they help the poorlittle film festival by having screenings in a couple of the of the venuesand make sure that none of the regular people who’ve bought passes couldget in.

Well, that’s what they did with Mission Impossible III, at least.

The press release began something like this:

APRIL 12, 2006 [New York] – Tom Cruise, the most exciting and successful
action star in the world, returns to one of his signature roles, Secret Agent
Ethan Hunt, in the summer’s most highly anticipated action thriller, “Mission:
Impossible III” – and Cruise will celebrate the U.S. premiere of the film on
May 3 at the Tribeca Film Festival with a full day of screenings and events
throughout Manhattan as part of “Mission: NYC.” Bringing the film and
Cruise directly to fans and filmgoers,“Mission: NYC” kicks off with Cruise
appearing live on “TRL” in Times Square and culminates nearly six hours later
with the U.S. premiere of the film at the Festival.


There were actually three premiers. One was at the Zigfield, the last humongous movie theater in Manhattan (Radio City doesn’t count), where premiers aresupposed to be, the 68th street AMC/Lowes, which is an official venue ofthe TFF, and the Magic Johnson Theater waay uptown in Harlem. That was the one I attended.

I wasn’t planning to go that far north, but I gotan email from one of those “free movie tickets if you pay twenty bucks toget into a party” companies, and they said that there giving out a hundred free tickets I got there by five. So I went uptown.
The line was around the block. They didn’t tell me that Paramount had passed out flyers all over Harlem.

Iwaited on line for the better part of an hour. The thing moved slowly andthe people giving out stuff repeatedly told us we’d get in, but when we gotto the front of the line we were confronted with an old trick dating fromthe days of Studio 54, they just corralled us back on the street. That wasn’tnice at all.

So I put my press pass around my neck and went past thesecurity up to where Black Entertainment Network’s® 106 and Park show washaving the stars of the film as guests and rap star and über-hottie Kanye rapped her way around the stage as a couple of hundred kids who’d been theresince about two in the afternoon danced in the lobby of the multiplex.

It’samazing how many of the girls thought that Tom Cruise was cuter than Larry Fishburne. Doesn’t matter, I was too busy drooling over Kanya, while theyasked the stars stupid questions and everyone in the studio audience juststood there during the commercial breaks.

When the whole mischagas was over, there was the problem of getting into the movie. Everyone elsehad a color-coded wrist band which indicated which theater they should goto. I didn’t have one and didn’t know if I could get passed the burley securityguards that were far too much in evidence.

It wasn’t has hard asI thought. I just went into one of the screening rooms where the guards lookeddistracted. I waited alone a bit, left, came back again, and nobody stoppedme. Then the place filled up and before it did the film had started.

Ididn’t have the address to the party until I got back, but then it was toolate. I was dead tired. I should have gone because the Paramount PR department hates my guts because I’m still a film critic and won’t stop trying to get in their screenings.

Everybody else is fine with that, which is why I get into most movie screenings and have for more than a decade. But that's neither here nor there.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

So, basically, you're a crasher. Thank you for admitting it at least. Good for you